Fallen
by Mysteriol
Summary: G REV. Fatigue, regret, guilt, and the miniscule hope of rekindling a long lost friendship. A one shot focusing on Kai’s thoughts as he pays a hospital visit to a comatose Tala Ivanov late one night.


Fallen

Kai's POV

_A/N: _

_Just a little warning. It's pretty **long**, detailed, and some stuff are my own intepretation. I have not watched this episode yet, and some stuff are simply based on the foundations created by my favourite authors, carzla and AngelhearteD. There's a lot of excessive, unnecessary thoughts in Kai's POV, and erh.. yes, you probably need a lot of stamina to really devour this fic. It's rather in-depth and…did I mention it already? Yeah, the word is **long. **_

_Also, because of the lengthy fic, I've decided to simply scan through for grammar/spelling errors, so I'll probably miss out some and have erred somewhere somehow. Please do not flame too badly, because erh…yeah, you get my drift. Heh. _

_But still, I hope you do devour this fic, neh! Cheers and enjoy_

_mysterio000_

It is past midnight now.

As I make my way silently across to your ward, my steps are quietly clicking against the metallic-like, marbled grounds. I'm trying to make as less noise as I can, not because I want to go way out of my character by abiding to the hospital's regulations of not disturbing its patients, but to avoid been seen. It is not the best time for a patient to be lurking around the grounds himself, much less the infamous Kai Hiwatari who inundated the headlines of every newspaper article since the day I defeated Brooklyn.

Hn, I'm barely alive, and I'm battered and bruised all over. My wounds are bathed in red, and there are gashes inflicted all upon my flesh and skin where they sting and seethe in pain every time I try to move, but it is okay. This pain shall serve to be a reminder to my stupid, foolish mistakes for as long as I remember, as with the immense regret that weighs upon my shoulder as I make my way towards your ward, Tala.

It's so quiet. I wonder what are the others doing now. Ray, Max, Tyson, Daichi…all…my friends. Strange how things are coming along now. Back then, even when I had barely made it alive from the Baikal ice, friendship still appeared externally as something surreal and elusive to me, far from within my understanding and grasp of knowledge. But now, in the most perculiar circumstances, only when _you _fall, do I start to realize a lot of things.

These days, I've been thinking a lot. I haven't slept for days now. I think I've lost count. Everytime I close my eyes, I'm reminded of the countless sins I've committed, the umpteen betrayals, the entity of Kai Hiwatari as a traitor…And each time when I do all this stupid things, the responsibility always fall on the same person to shoulder the blames and faults pushed into your way.

You, Tala.

And it seems like I've never understood your burden, your pain, your duty - until now.

The door is before me, and the knob shimmers in my vision. I hesitate a little, and wild thoughts begin to swirl in my mind. You're comatose, you probably can't even hear me as I enter your ward. Bryan and Spencer will probably start plotting my demise when they hear about a lone, late-night visitor into your ward, suspecting me firsthand when they realize Dranzer by your bed is gone. But what holds me back is not the impending doom I shall face in time, but the foreign maelstrom of emotions I deem so impossible for an abbey-trained person I will be overwhelmed with when I set my sight upon your fallen frame.

That - I don't think I can handle.

I pause in my tracks. Suddenly, I don't know what I must do. I don't want to only go in, and see your frail, pallid face, eyes closed in its slumber seemingly of eternity, eyelids shaped in their half-crescent likes, breathing labored in its rhythmic pattern…

And the homophonic tones of the beeping machine that I know as the thing that is keeping you going for now, Tala. Hn, you'll probably scoff and hurl all the abusive words you've ever learnt in your vocabulary when you realize you're actually depending on a scientific invention to keep you alive, but it's true. You're on the life support unit now.

I wonder how you'll react if you actually know of that. A faint smile touch my lips as I imagine you unplugging yourself from the unit, cursing something akin to, "What? The last thing I need is a damn life support unit. I can do bloody fine on my own. Get this thing off me!"

…Suddenly, I wish you would do that. I just wish you would suddenly do all the stupid, idiotic things I never would want you to do when you were pink in health before. I don't even care if you start bombarding me with irritating questions that grate on my nerves, like "Where have you been, Kai?", "What happened back in the battle? You weren't supposed to lose"…I don't even care if you jibe me with your sarcasm-induced remarks, calling me pathetic in battle and whatsoever. Even if we behave like enemies, and you treat me like the least favorite person on your list beside Tyson Granger, I don't care.

I may sound over-sappy…and most delusioned, but it's this, Tala: I want to see you awake again, and do all these things I once claim as typically irritating of you.

My heart swims a little within as I touch the doorknob, and twist it open.

Funny, how time suddenly seem to have cease in its revolvement, as if it has stopped elapsing.

There is a smell of musk, imbued with the clinical impassive scent of the million hospital equipments you're surrounded with. Even the green walls around don't give off a serene feeling as they are supposed to. My heart starts beating eratically, and I suddenly start to fear what I would see when I see _you._

And I hear it. _Beep, beep, beep… _The machine that you are dependent on now. They make strange, green lines on the control screen, reflecting the rate of your pulse, as it elicits noises with it. If you can actually hear in your coma, Tala, you'd probably flip in your state of semi-consciousness now. The beeping noises will be too much for you to take. You always hate unnecessary noises, one of the gazillion reasons you loathe Tyson and Daichi.

A little strange, isn't it? Even those people that have hated you in the past, that has labelled you as the epitome of the beyblading bad boys, leading a group of psychotic bladers who only know how to unleash blitzkrieg attacks and finish their opponents' blades in one go, are remembering you as the one who had tried to save them all.

You're a hero now, you know. A fallen hero, like this.

Tala Ivanov, team captain of the Blitzkrieg Boys, who led in his discreet attempts to uncover the moronic pervert Boris Balkov's maniacal ambitions to transform the whole beyblading arena, but was entirely mistaken by the whole world. You've made it to the headlines these days.

You've earned billions of fans from your brilliant battle out there with Garland. Novae Rog was spectacular, glorious to the last minute details when the ice encased in layers around Garland's blade shattered like brittle glass. I'd rather tell Tyson his Dragoon actually has some power, than admit this to you of all people, Tala, but Wolborg has always been impeccable in his attacks; stunning. The bit beast attack who always had the audience's jaws to the floor.

When you were thrown feet away into the air, your supposed rival teams were huddling around you, trying to gather you to your consciousness with their most conscientious efforts. I never thought I'll see your rivals, those who swore their eternal hatred to you before, supporting and cheering you on like this.

But what did Kai Hiwatari do when his team captain, his tag team mate, his childhood _friend, _fell upon the ground, drifting into the dangerous brink of death?

He walked away. That jerk chose to walk away from the one who needed him. You, Tala, trusted me to take down Boris Balkov. I saw that look in your eyes, and deciphered it perfectly. Our past in the abbey has made us read each other like naked books, and I knew that face when you gave it. You actually _trusted _me - the one who betrayed your team countless times and cost you your Russian title once - to defeat Boris.

You've always been like this, Tala. You probably even hoped I'll join back into your team to win for Russia when we had our hands in a firm handshake, even held the miniscule faith in me that I'll stick around and eventually become friends with you again, albeit nothing close like how we were six years ago.

You hoped for too much, onto the promises I gave you when we were children. But each time, I only serve to let you down over again, and each time, you don't give up hope on me. Sometimes I feel like asking you why, why do you even bother wasting time on such an arrogant fool like Kai Hiwatari.

Cobalt eyes rake the white-washed plain sheets, and then black dots threaten to eat away my vision when I set sight upon you.

I've never seen you like this before. Never, not once. Not even back in the abbey after you've been severely whipped by the guards for defying Boris in the boldest ways possible. Back then, despite looking like you've been a casualty of the world war, you had daringly smiled at me and assured me you'd be okay.

But now, you can't even so much utter a word to me, and you look even worse than before.

I walk up to you, and pull down my hood to examine you on a closer front.

You look like you've been through hell, Tala. Your face - it's so white and ghastly pale, like it has lost all colors akin to humanity, devoid of the slightest tinge of emotions. There are bandages around your right eyes, and you've obviously suffered a serious injury on your left cheek that will probably leave a defaced scar in the future. You wear an oxygen mask, and I watch as the condensed air rise up and vaporize in the small plastic cover.

I've always wanted to be the one ahead of you competitively, in battles, in winning Boris's favor, in getting Black Dranzer…but never thought I'd be looking down on you like this, in the literal, physical sense, onto your deathly pale face the shadow of a ghostly shade.

You look so cold, so comfortable, so fatigued. Like you've fought too much in your life, and now, you're taking all your chances to hibernate in your unconscious cocoon.

You probably don't even realize that when you're doing all of that, your horde of new-earned fans are awaiting your awakening out there. That includes your rival teams, Bryan and Spencer, those that care for you…

And me.

If I'm going to continue denying it, then I don't see what's the point anymore. I feel like shit when I know you're there, and the fact that I could have helped you, and didn't, makes it all worse. A true friend would have launched his blade to back yours up, but I didn't. Kai Hiwatari is never a true friend to anyone, much less to Tala Ivanov.

But you want the truth? You can wake up and blackmail me with my melodramatic thoughts in the future, but here's the truth, and I'm giving it to you, open and brutally honest.

I still respect you, Tala, as a fellow beyblader and as a _friend, _even back when I left the abbey, even when I was part of the Demolition Boys and betrayed you, and till now, when I'm still a Blitzkrieg Boy.

You've never stop being a friend to me, if that's what you want to hear. Never, not once.

Hn, I may brush you off like you're insignificant to me. The world are misled to think we're a pair of complete strangers, like you're my enemy. But they're dead wrong. Know why? Because all this while, deep down somewhere, I still harbor this single shred of hope to rekindle our friendship we once had in the past.

You don't even speak much when we were a tag team. When I finished my fight and had done my job, or simply when we were watching the other teams take out each other on the beydish, you'd always be by my side. Somehow, I'd always find myself in the posture of trademark Kai, the one where I have my head bowed, and my back hunched over in an impersonal front. Like I don't want anyone to bother me.

You'll always give me the looks, like you know something, like you want to say something, but you don't. Your glacier blue eyes always read me naked, and I've always squirmed in unease when I catch them. Maybe you even knew back then my true intentions of joining the Blitzkrieg Boys, because your critical look gives me the gut feeling that you do, but you don't say anything.

Lately, I've read the previous issues of the newspapers…and have seen many of the pictures the cameramen has snapped. Much of them are the Blitzkrieg Boys making headlines of their wins, and I realized how often we've been in the limelight _together. _In every picture where I am, you're beside me, and vice versa.

It's funny how I noticed in every picture, that we've always had the same pose or looks. Similar death glares, equal stances of folded arms across our chest, set of eyes giving off daggers of fatality like we're ready to kill someone…

Heh…I guess you can say we're still so much like the past in the abbey, doing everything similiarly unconsciously, even though it's been so many years that have separated our distances now. Boris used to put us apart because we were too alike in many ways. Some guards even thought we were biologically linked, what with our excessive habit of defying authorites, poses of folded arms plus a death glare to scare and intimidate, our equivalent standard of sarcasm in dealing with creeps we hate…

Even back when we were young, running around the abbey in the night like stalking primates anticipating to play pranks on the Balkov staff, you were like a big brother to me. You don't admit it, but it's been…what, six years? You were always looking out for me back then. "Where's Kai?" You would demand when I've been sent for another whipping, and after my rounds of torture, I'll see you sneaking into my punishment cell (though I don't always know how you're capable of that with all the tight security), and simply tending to my wounds with the bandages you've brought along.

And now, it's ironic how I'm looking after you while you're lying in the hospital bed, comatose; fallen.

You'll wake up, won't you? I don't know what I'll feel if you don't…Guilt, probably…Immense regret, definitely. I never even gotten the chance to say so much to you, that I've actually never forgotten our past, that I actually treat you as a friend, that I want us to be how we were six years then…

I lean over, and pick up Dranzer.

It flickers and emanates a warm, familiar glow in my hands, tingling my skin.

Tala, you will wake up to see Boris fall, and this is one promise I _will _keep. You'll see to it. With Dranzer by my side, I can do anything as long as it can still spin.

And when you do open those eyes of yours again, there's only one thing left to say. That I want to be your friend again, and I won't quit waiting for you to wake until you do.

**Owari **

_A/N: _

_Yay! (pats readers on the back) I'm so glad you made it here, you actually finished reading such a lengthy fic. Pardon the grammar/spelling errors if any, 'cause it was not beta-ed thoroughly. Bah, it's pretty long and wordy, I know, and I swear Kai went OOC somewhere out there. _

_Still, drop a review and make my day! _

_mysterio000_


End file.
